Keith Tierney updated and enhanced this work in 2018 based on an adaptation of Business Law and the Legal Environment by the Saylor Academy.

This course is designed for students who want to learn about and appreciate basic biological topics while studying the smallest units of biology: molecules and cells.

Examines complex financial decision-making and identifies the tools and methods managers use to make informed decisions. We begin by introducing the terms we will reference in later units. We will discuss various methods and theories managers use to track costs and profits. In the final section, we explore how managers report the overall performance of a firm or department for internal use.

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This course will introduce you to communication principles, common communication practices, and a selection of theories to better understand the communication transactions that you experience in your daily life. The principles and practices that you study in this course will provide the foundation for further study in communications.

This course systematically examines the elements of an effective speech and goes through an element-by-element examination of the essentials of public speaking, while also identifying traits of the individual speaker and how they affect preparation and presentation. This course also demonstrates specific, performance-oriented aspects of public speaking. The themes of information and ethics tie these elements together and are emphasized in every part of the course because they are vitally important to all communicators.

This course will provide you with a basic understanding of the principles of microeconomics. At its core, the study of economics deals with the choices and decisions we make to manage the scarce resources available to us. Microeconomics is the branch of economics that pertains to decisions made at the individual level, such as the choices individual consumers and companies make after evaluating resources, costs, and tradeoffs.

This course is designed to extend your knowledge of the basic microeconomic principles that will provide the foundation for your future work in economics and give you insight into how economic models can help us think about important real-world phenomena. Topics include the interaction of supply and demand, utility and profit maximization, elasticity, perfect competition, monopoly power, imperfect competition, and game theory.

Word Count: 38420

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This text was adapted by Saylor Academy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensor.

Saylor Academy would like to thank Andy Schmitz for his work in maintaining and improving the HTML versions of these textbooks. This textbook is adapted from his HTML version, and his project can be found here.

Publisher: Saylor Academy
Year Published: 2012

Short Description:
Download FREE digital formats or read online. Operations management is a science with which we are all, in some capacity, familiar. We all have scarce resources and have to allocate those resources properly. Think about the process of preparing a meal: you have to gather all the proper ingredients and prepare them for cooking. Certain ingredients go in at certain times. Occasionally, you fall behind or get too far ahead, jeopardizing the entire meal. And, of course, if you find that you do not have enough ingredients, even more problems arise. All of these elements of meal preparation – purchasing ingredients, prepping the ingredients by dicing them up, mixing ingredients together, boiling or baking the dish, serving, and cleaning – can be seen as parts of operations management.

Word Count: 161596

ISBN: 978-1-990641-95-4

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The scope and emphasis of this course go beyond a general understanding of civics to incorporate the core concepts of the American system of government, the workings of its myriad of actors and agencies, the key components of "politics" in the American system, and how American government shapes and influences the individual freedoms and rights of its citizens.

This short article, produced by historian Dr. David Toye for the Saylor Foundation, describes the employment of indentured servants and slaves in the different regions of the American colonies.

Social Problems: Continuity and Change is a textbook covering social problems, poverty, racial and ethnic inequality, gender and sexual diversity inequality, aging, substance abuse, crime, sexual behavior, family, schools and education, work and the economy, urban and rural problems, health and healthcare, population and the environment, war, and terrorism.

This course is designed to equip you with the basic academic, professional, and personal skills you will need to be successful in college. You are probably already familiar with some of the skills and topics that will be covered here; other concepts may be brand-new to you. For example, perhaps you have already learned some effective test-taking strategies that work well for you, but you have never heard of the concept of learning styles. Or, you may be familiar with your learning style, but you want to improve your listening skills and learn how to adapt your learning style to a new academic environment.
Each student will have a different skill set when he or she starts this course. The point of this course is to give you, a new college student or a person considering a college education, a purposeful, thorough overview of the many tools and skills needed for undergraduate success, as well as to help you understand how you can improve each of these skills over time. Keep in mind that the terms skills, tools, and resources can refer to academic, social, psychological, and emotional skills and techniques as well as physical objects such as books and supplies.

You may be tempted to consider some of the broad learning outcomes that are outlined in this course as unimportant for your immediate success in college. For example, you may wonder whether it is really worth your time to think about your long-term career goals or your exercise habits at the very beginning of your college experience. However, having a sense of purpose that motivates you and a lifestyle that supports your ability to focus on your academic goals are the basic building blocks of success in college and beyond.

The first unit of this course will help you determine your goals for your college education. In other words, you will have the opportunity to thoughtfully answer the question, why am I pursuing an undergraduate degree? Knowing the answer to this question will help you stay motivated when you encounter challenges during your college experience. In units 2 and 3 of this course, you will learn how to manage your personal space and time in order to maximize your ability to learn. In units 4 through 8 of this course, you will explore the learning process itself and the different skills and tools you can use to improve your academic performance. Unit 9 focuses on tests and test-taking, a subject that can cause great anxiety for many students. Units 10 and 11 provide you with general strategies for effectively communicating with college instructors as well as managing stress, anxiety, and other factors that affect your academic goals and overall health during college. Being a college student can present unique and new challenges to your health, and staying healthy, both physically and mentally, are crucial components of your success. Unit 12 of this course addresses the importance of your social life to your college success, and unit 13, the final unit of this course, equips you with some tools to help prepare you for a career after college.

By the end of this course, you will have gained a comprehensive overview of the skills, tools, and resources you will need for a successful, healthy, and happy college experience. You will understand how to apply the concepts discussed in this course to your individual academic and personal goals, and to practice the skills you have learned by testing them in specific college courses that you plan to take or are already taking. Finally, you will possess a strong starting point for applying your newfound skills to your job search and your career beyond college.